According to a study conducted by creditcards.com, credit and debit card fraud is the No. 1 fear of Americans in the midst of the global financial crisis. Concern about fraud supersedes that of terrorism, computer and health viruses, and personal safety.
A colleague of mine recently had her purse stolen from her parked vehicle in a well-lighted parking area while she spent time coaching children for the Special Olympics. She reported the theft within a couple of hours of the incident and found out that all her credit cards had already been used at retail establishments not far from the incident.
Closer to home, just before the holidays, we had fraudulent transactions recorded against our credit card and had to cancel the card and have a new one issued. For us, that was the second time we had to cancel a card this past year. We never found out how the crooks got our account information.
Thieves and hackers are getting more and more aggressive. This is in spite of the increased security measures that card issuers are implementing to prevent fraud. You have probably noticed that when using your credit card at locations away from home, you may need to provide your zip code or government ID to verify your identity. When purchasing online, you may be asked to enter the 3-digit security code on the back of your card in addition to providing the account number. You may even get a call from your card issuer validating recent transactions to ensure you initiated them. These measures are all attempts to prevent or quickly detect instances of fraud.
What can we do? For starters, we can:
Protect our personal identity information (i.e. SSN numbers, passwords, account numbers, etc.) by not providing such information over the phone or responding to online scams
Secure our debit / credit cards physically by not leaving them unattended, or when using them on the internet, only use secure websites (those using https: web addresses)
However, even these procedures don’t guarantee that you won’t be victimized. We also need to increase our vigilance on debit / credit card transactions. I used to wait for our monthly account statement to review transactions in our account. Now, I access our account online and review the charges every couple of days to make sure only valid charges hit the account. If we can’t prevent fraud, at least we can minimize the damages.
Note from the Sun Day: Just this past month, the Sun Day was also a victim of debit card fraud. A phone call from the issuing bank alerted us to the fraud hours after it occurred and put a freeze on the account, but a new card had to be issued and an affidavit testifying there was fraudulent activity needed to be filled out. This came as a great surprise, as the account information is closely guarded, and there is no indication as to how the thief obtained the account information, which was used to make two small online purchases under a [presumed] false name.
Keep those letters coming, folks. Send your ideas to: The Frugal Forum, P.O. Box 693, Huntley, IL 60142 or by email to: thefrugalforum@gmail.com
